


Confluence

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 04:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for superflight/poisontea (I don't know your AO3 name ;-;)  Set during AHM and the Swarm</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confluence

"Stop squirming," Ratchet groused, one hand mashing flat against the mech's face, as his other tried to keep the chest plate still. It was harder than it needed to be, because the damaged chestplate was slick with energon. But he hadn't been a trauma medic for a few million years without being able to handle it. Even here, at the end of the world, he hadn't lost that: muscle memory, or something deeper.   
  
There wasn't much he couldn't handle, really.   
  
"Mmmfphnnnn," the mech mumbled into Ratchet's palm.   
  
"Yeah, you better," Ratchet shot back. It didn't matter what this one said--probably something like 'it's not that bad', or 'I can handle it'. To think in the ancient days before the war, he'd run free skimmer clinics in the Dead End because life treating the rich and well-heeled hadn't been exciting or dramatic enough. He'd remembered that earnest intensity, like a supernova burning in his chassis, wanting to do 'real good'. 'Save lives'. He'd saved so many lives he'd lost count, and he wondered now, with the perspective of time, if it hadn't been something like a drug to him back then, the rush of a mech's life in your hands, the heady knowledge that you could bring him back from the brink.   
  
A long time ago: and if it ever had been an addiction it had worn itself out through surfeit.   
  
The mech resisted--he could feel the neck actuators engage--as he tried to tip the chin up, exposing the throat, one hand coming up to cover Ratchet's.   
  
"Listen," Ratchet said, pitching just enough irritation in his voice to cut through resistance, "I need to scan your PIC." Meaning, 'I'm going to', of course. He felt the actuators relax, pistons releasing and the head tilted up revealing the throat cabling and the tiny, tiny plate of the personal ident code. He grunted something that might have been thanks, scanning it quickly.   
  
A long pause, and for a moment he wondered if his scanner had finally given up the ghost. It wouldn't have surprised him: out here, everything was dying. Dying by inches, dying by yards, Cybertron around them roaring with the Swarm, as though succumbing to corruption incarnate.   
  
And then a flash. One hit, from....a long, long time ago. From Rodion. The clinic.   
  
Drift. Better known in later years as Deadlock. A nom de guerre or an alter ego. He wondered which was the surface, which the essence: Drift or Deadlock.   
  
"You." He lifted his hand from where it was covering the other's face, staring, as Verity would have put it, as though he'd seen a ghost.   
  
"Me." A weak smile. "Didn't think you'd remember."   
  
He hadn't. "Doesn't look like you took my advice," he said.   
  
"I don't remember you advising me not to get mauled by someone's science project run amuck," the mech said. It was an attempt at a joke. A terrible one.   
  
"Yeah, well, you probably don't remember much from back then, anyway," Ratchet griped. "Fraggin' brain circuitry half-melted."  
  
"I remember enough." The voice was sober, almost sad. "And I didn't take anyone's advice back then."   
  
"Yeah, I heard." Who hadn't? He'd certainly had more than one night, after Dabola, after countless other battlefields, wishing he would have let Deadlock's former self die on that slab in Rodion, just for the lives and misery it would have saved. Which was a horrible thought for a medic to have, and his ancient self cringed back at the very idea.   
  
"I owe you," Drift said. "For that." He pushed up, struggling onto his elbows.   
  
"You don't owe me anything," Ratchet said, frowning. "And lie the frag back down." These were always dangerous moments, when he couldn't separate his job from his feelings, when the patient hovered on that border of being a real mech, with a personality and a history, when success or failure _mattered_.   
  
Drift subsided, easing down to his back, spaulders sliding up the MARB's repair slab, obedient. He looked down at his chassis, at the ruptured chestplate, the shattered glass of his windscreen. "It's not that--"  
  
"If you even think of saying 'it's not that bad'," Ratchet said, fixing the blue optics with his own, "I will find a way to make you regret it."  
  
A guilty grimace. "I just, I wanted to thank you. For back then."  
  
Ratchet's mouth twitched. "Just doing what I do." He bent over the injured chassis, pulling out fragments of glass, wiping away leaking energon to get a clearer look.   
  
"No," Drift said. "You _cared_. You said I was special."  
  
"Say that to everyone," Ratchet muttered, bending lower.   
  
"I don't think so," Drift said, and his voice was thin and strained, as though that would hurt more than his injury. "I thought you were a fool--"  
  
"I was a fool," Ratchet cut in, but Drift stopped, pinching his mouth and sighing, before he continued.  
  
"But what you said mattered. It meant something." He gave a lopsided grin. "Not a lot of mechs talk like that down there."   
  
A long moment. "Yeah. I meant it." A hard-won admission. He bent back over the injury,   
  
"I want to make it up to you," Drift said. "Tell me how."  
  
How. How do you make up for the war, for fighting on the wrong side for all those years, for killing and maiming and pain and loss and all the lives Ratchet had felt slip through his fingers? "Don't worry about it." Because he couldn't worry about it himself, not in this place. The Swarm seethed outside the doors of the citadel and any day, any cycle, they'd rupture through and it would all be over. The war, fighting, life, for everyone. In a way, the war wouldn't matter anymore. In a way, it didn't matter. Just life and death. And living. "You want to make it up to me? Live, then, for as long as you can."   
  
A hand came up, its speed nearly matching his own, catching one of his wrists from where it was working over Drift's open wound. He met the blue gaze again, this time lambent with emotion, as the hand crept up, sliding fingers over his palm. "You too," Drift said, and the voice in the darkness was almost the sound of hope.


End file.
